


Night and Day You Are the One

by ljs



Category: Lord Peter Wimsey - Dorothy L. Sayers
Genre: F/M, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-27
Updated: 2015-06-27
Packaged: 2018-04-06 11:48:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4220541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ljs/pseuds/ljs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Acknowledgement: Cole Porter.</p>
<p>Sometime after <i>Busman's Honeymoon</i> -- At a Chelsea artists' party with Peter, Harriet thinks about truth, victory, and love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Night and Day You Are the One

“Would you wish to dance, my lord?” Harriet said, her eyes twinkling.

Peter sighed: she felt his breath rather than heard it – since the Chelsea artists’ party couldn’t be described as anything but cacophonous. “My lady, if I must.”

“You needn’t if you don’t wish to,” she said, and put her hand over his on the table, and smiled into his eyes. “Eiluned and Sylvia won’t be unhappy if we don’t join.”

“No, no,” he said. “Let me not give Eiluned any more reason to glower at me, foolish male that I am.”

Harriet glanced over in the corner, where her friends were curled together over the bottle of Mumms Peter had offered as a gift for their “friendship” celebration. “I don’t think, Peter darling, that she is paying any attention to you at all.”

“Excellent. Then let us trip the light fantastic in… perhaps that square foot of space there, by the bay window.”

She let him help her to her feet. “I suspect that actual dancing is out of the question. Perhaps a gentle sway or two in unison?”

“Even better,” he said, “it is so suggestive of happy things,” and spun her into his arms.

It was vaguely ludicrous, she thought, that even after years and children with Peter she felt an unmistakable thrill up her spine when he pulled her close like this. But then she always had done, even when she had told herself otherwise – as at Wilvercombe, where, sulky and blind, she had trotted ‘round the dance floor with him. He had told her to buy a claret-coloured frock then. It had swished so nicely as they had spun, all those years ago….

She cocked her head, trying to make out the melody in the din. “Peter, what is the tune to which we trip?”

“Hmm. Is there a tune? I was thinkin’ we were simply moving in time to the rhythm of our joined hearts.”

“This is no time to play the silly ass, my lord. What is it?”

“As my lady commands,” he said, and rested his chin on her shoulder. They swayed together – oh sweet union—for a few measures before he said, “I am no expert on these modern sounds—"

“True. Nothing past 1791.”

He breathed a laugh in her ear, which gave her an involuntary shiver of delight. “’She jests at scars that never felt a wound….’ No, actually I know this one. It belongs to that Cole Porter chap. ‘Night and Day,’ I do believe.”

She heard it now, recognized it as one they in fact had danced to at Wilvercombe, smiled into his shoulder, let him lead.

He was the one indeed. Who would have thought it.

And then she remembered the day, so long ago now, when she had stood a newly freed and vindicated woman, with Eiluned and Sylvia by her side. Sylvia had predicted then Harriet would call on Peter: ‘I was right about who did the murder, and I’m going to be right about this,’ she’d said.

Peter turned a half-step, his body warm against hers through their clothes, and Harriet saw Eiluned whispering in Sylvia’s ear, an intimate sign.

That was right, so right, as perfect as Peter’s arm around her back and her hand in his.

She turned her head and brushed her lips over his ear. “Peter darling, let’s go home.”

His breath caught. “As my lady commands,” he said huskily.

She waved at Eiluned and Sylvia as she and Peter left. She would send them golden chrysanthemums tomorrow, she thought to herself. Those deeply coloured blooms meant truth and victory, triumph for all. Love for all.


End file.
